New uses for Cord Blood as an immunotherapy and in the treatment of lysosomal storage disease

New uses for Cord Blood as an immunotherapy and in the treatment of lysosomal storage disease

Dr Jaap Boelens, Pediatric Oncologist at the University of Utrecht has also been working on developing multiple treatments using cord blood. One of which involves using cord blood transplants to improve the outcomes of an immunotherapy (Dendritic Cell Vaccination) which will go into the clinic later this year. He will be discussing his findings at the Cord Blood World Europe Congress in London on 20 – 21 May.

Like CAR-T therapies, cancer vaccines attempt to harness immune cells to fight cancer. Vaccines focus on dendritic cells, the immune system’s most powerful antigen receptors. It has been noted that while much of the immunotherapy research so far has been in blood cancers, there is evidence that these approaches also may be effective in solid tumours, even the deadliest and least-treatable solid cancers, like pancreatic cancer.

He is also working on multiple international collaborative studies (CIBMTR, Duke University, Minnesota, EBMT) on a treatment for lysosomal storage disease, a group of rare metabolic disorders, and has found cord blood to be the preferable treatment in these cases, resulting in a high impact paper.

Involved multiple international collaborative studies over the last decade (CIBMTR, Duke University, Minnesota, EBMT) which has resulted in multiple manuscripts including some high impact papers (see pubmed). The main conclusions are: